


Metaphysical Fingerprints

by alltoseek



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Angst, Gen, Metaphysical Discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-01-21 04:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/pseuds/alltoseek
Summary: Captain Roberts has a talk with his son about the nature of souls.





	Metaphysical Fingerprints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shewhoguards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/gifts).



Captain Roberts was profoundly grateful for his adopted son, his wife having died in childbirth some years ago. He viewed the boy as a gift bestowed by God himself and his sense of duty towards the child was strong.

One Sunday on the walk home from church, he was drawn into a discussion with young Motta about souls. He liked to encourage his son's thirst for knowledge, which was seemingly endless, and especially his religious education. He started to explain: “Your soul is your essential being, your spirit –”

“Like a ghost?” Motta queried.

“No, child,” the Captain said. “Ghosts are disturbed spirits. They are not the healthy, intact soul of a person.”

“The soul is healthy?”

“Yes,” he answered firmly, stumping down the path as if it were the rolling deck of a sea-going ship, his boy trotting gracefully alongside, at ease on land and water both.

The boy pondered his answer. “If you get sick, do you lose your soul?”

“No, no,” said the Captain, chuckling a bit. “Your body gets sick; sometimes a mind or brain can be sick too, but that doesn't touch the soul. Your soul is what makes you  _ you, _ different from everyone else, unique.”

“I thought that was my fingerprints.”

The Captain boomed out a laugh. Really, the things children say. Never failed to startle and amuse him, the way their minds worked. “Your fingers are a part of your body. Your soul is – it's the  _ heart _ of you that binds your body together.” He gripped his large, callused hand into a fist in front of his chest for emphasis.

“Your heart?” asked Motta, confused.

“Not the organ, the heart that pumps your blood. Your soul provides your consciousness, and… uh, and your conscience,” he tried to explain, still fumbling for the right words.

“Like your mind?”

“No, not exactly. The mind arises from the brain. Your soul… it is the essence of you.” His hands and arms gestured in large, vague movements, the gold braids of his epaulettes thumping softly against his finest broadcloth coat.

“What does it mean if you don't have a soul?” his son asked.

The Captain chuckled, softly and kindly. “All humans have souls; you can't be human and not have a soul. Animals don't have souls. But God created humans with souls. The soul goes on living after the body is dead. The soul goes to the afterlife, where you are one with God.” Captain Roberts didn't believe in frightening children with stories of Hell. Better to tell them always that they are good, inherently good, even if they make mistakes or misbehave. If you tell them they are good, he reasoned, eventually they will come to believe it, and they will do good.

“But what if your soul is taken from you?” little Motta was asking.

The Captain smiled, almost startled into another laugh, but he didn't want to dismiss his son's natural concern and curiosity so lightly. “It can't be,” he explained. “When you die, your soul naturally separates from your body. If you are living, your soul is still within you – a part of you. No one can take it.” The boy started to say something else, but his father interrupted. “I know this is difficult to understand. You are young; you don't need to understand completely right now. You will understand more as you grow, and learn, and pray. For right now, you concentrate on being good, and God will look after your soul.”

  
  


That was all right, thought Mordecai. He'd got his answer. Since his soul had been taken from him (he knew this, even if his father didn't) he must be dead already; he just looked alive. Or maybe he was an animal, but one that looked human. He didn't really look like anyone he knew (except the Others, when they visited) so maybe he wasn't human like the Captain; he was something Other, something animal. He heard the names some people called him. His father said to ignore them, that the name-callers were ignorant and cruel, and their name-calling was due to a problem with  _ them, _ not anything at all to do with Motta. But his father was human, and humans made mistakes, right? That's what the Captain always told him, when Mordecai made a mistake. Then his father forgave him and told Motta to forgive himself.

So he forgave his father for not knowing that Mordecai was living without a soul, was not a human but an Other; that Mordecai's soul was not one with God, taken care of by God, but was held by the Others.

Since Mordecai wasn't a human with a soul, the rules about Good and Bad didn't really apply to him, did they? Those were human rules, like the rule that humans weren't supposed to fight or kill other humans, but animals fought and killed each other all the time.

So when the Others told him to do things that the Captain had always said were Bad, or even Evil, that was still okay for Mordecai, because he had no soul. He would never be Good and one with God anyway.

 

**~o~o~o~**

 

Tacroy remembered that long-ago conversation, and his long-ago rationalisations – not that those had mattered anyway; he'd never had a choice. But rationalising one's actions, justifying them to oneself, was such a human undertaking… he smiled at the thought. He'd been human back then, whatever 'human' was or meant, even when soulless.

But now he knew what it was to be a human with a soul. For the first time in his life, he could feel his soul within him.

He had his soul, and freedom, and choice.

He was Christopher's man: he'd said that, and he meant to be true to his word. But now he had a choice, and the freedom to make that choice.

He chose to be Christopher's man, and he would choose to be Christopher's man from now on. Every day, he would make that choice again.

Because Christopher was the one who gave him the ability to choose, but he didn't force him to choose.

Tacroy now had a soul, and freedom, and choice.

Now that he had them, he intended to use them.


End file.
